Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

I've already decided to give Africa a go in the Never-Ending Country Challenge https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Before New Years 2017 I only had 5 countries read (Algeria, Cameroun, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal). I aimed for 20 new countries.

UPDATE New Years 2021
This list is simply getting to hard to update as I've in the last 4 years read 99 books from Africa - and a total of 47 of the 55 African countries.


UPDATE summer 2024
The last unread country:
Lesotho: Chaka by Thomas Mofolo
M'Atsepo Nthunya: Singing Away the Hunger

Countries I have read - and the titles read:
https://ucph.padlet.org/anetq/world

All my African reading is on this shelf: I have everything Africa on my Reading Africa shelf: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

Great African Reads Group
Somewhere along this journey I also took over running an existing group reading Africa: Great African Reads - please join us here, if you are interested:
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on your challenge for inspiration. Good luck!

Looks like an interesting list. What rules are you going with. Does the novel have to be set there (I see you have Heart of Darkness on there), or by an author from there, or just connected in some way?

Very interesting!

I'm going to monitor you with this challenge!

Thank you for the encouraging comments - I'm kind of hoping some of you might want to join my African Quest? Please do, and follow any rules you like!

I'll be using a pragmatic set of rules: I prefer stories written by someone from or living long-term in the country. I'll try to avoid the "Coming to America"-stories about leaving Africa, as well as the "Ex-pat in Africa"-stories.
But that being said I'll be pragmatic on two points:
1) Literature (translated at least) can be hard to come by from some corners of Africa - though I am counting on the good people and listmakers of Goodreads to help me out (as well as the danish library services). But in some cases I may have to make do...
2) There's a few canonized classics I've never read: Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Blixen's African Farm - which I am including even though they are written by Europeans. (Blixen was living and working in Kenya, but it's still more colonial history. If I can find another local author as well, I'll double down on those countries.

I may include some non-fiction as well, if I come across something relevant. (And a few on my list are biographical works already).

Please join if you want to explore Africa too!

I'll try to explore some of these myself. I'm long overdue in trying Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and sorely lacking in books from countries other than Nigeria.

Just found this very current list of recommendations, which looks great: http://lithub.com/25-new-books-by-afr...
(And my local library has most of them!)

You've read some interesting ones already and I'm definitely going to try some of the ones you have listed. I'm aiming to read at least 9 African authors for my Old and New Challenge, but only covering four countries. Here's the list:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

You're welcome to browse my bookshelves. I have separate African and South African shelves for both fiction and non-fiction.

That list looks great. I've only heard of a couple of them and I can't find them at my library, but I'll bookmark that page to refer back to later. Thanks for mentioning :)

Carolien wrote: "You've read some interesting ones already and I'm definitely going to try some of the ones you have listed. I'm aiming to read at least 9 African authors for my Old and New Challenge, but only cove..."

Excellent! Another Africa reader! I'll have a look at your lists - and maybe we can compare notes along the way.
I have everything Africa on my Reading Africa shelf: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

Oh one more rule: I forgot to mention - I am trying to read as many men as women (though women do not seem to have an easier time getting published in Africa, then anywhere else).

Some suggestions on female authors to help even things up.
Algeria: Fantasia by Assia Djebar
Somalia: Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Desert Flower by Waris Dirie or Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth by Warsan Shire
Mozambique: The First Wife: A Tale of Polygamy by Paulina Chiziane
Kenya: Kenya, Will You Marry Me? by Philo Ikonya
Ethiopia: Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste
Liberia: Konkai: Living Between Two Worlds by Mardia Stone
South Africa: The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer
Sierra Leonie: The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
Sudan: Minaret by Leila Aboulela
Egypt: Spectres by Radwa Ashour

Others by men.
Burkina Faso: The Parachute Drop by Norbert Zongo
Sudan: Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih
Chad: Told by Starlight in Chad by Joseph Brahim Seid
Niger: The Epic of Askia Mohammed by Nouhou Malio
Burundi: Baho!: A Novel by Roland Rugero
Mali: The Fortunes of Wangrin by Amadou Hampâté Bâ
Mozambique: Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto
Central African Republic: Daba's Travels from Ouadda to Bangui by Makombo Bamboté

Hope that is useful, not redundant. :)
I've been doing a world challenge - but with a focus on Africa last year.

Zoe wrote: "Some suggestions on female authors to help even things up..."
Thanks! I've only come across some of those - so I'll check them out!

A great idea for a challenge, I hope you enjoy it.

This website has the top 100 African books of the 20th century if you haven't found it already.
http://www.ascleiden.nl/content/webdo...

Zoe wrote: "This website has the top 100 African books of the 20th century if you haven't found it already.
http://www.ascleiden.nl/content/webdo..."
No! Thanks again :)

Zoe wrote: "This website has the top 100 African books of the 20th century if you haven't found it already.
http://www.ascleiden.nl/content/webdo..."

And someone has added it to Listopia:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7...

Anetq wrote: "Zoe wrote: "This website has the top 100 African books of the 20th century if you haven't found it already.
http://www.ascleiden.nl/content/webdo..."

And so..."

That's cool!

Update 13/2
So yeah, the first half of January I made progress, then I had no reading time and got distracted by easy crime fiction and the world of bacteria I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life.

I also got swamped by a pile of African litt, kindly supplied by my local library, but had two false starts:

Kill Me Quick by Meja Mwangi
...which bored me: I only got half the way in, but it seems like a dreary and depressing tale of the lack of options, when living in the streets in a country plagued by poverty. From the 70s which may explain the boring social realism?

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila
...This one is often compared to jazz music, and I can see why. I had a hard time getting into it, and tried (but failed horribly) reading it on trains and buses - but it just felt like that really modern jazz with lots of strange noises, but nothing recognisable as music.
- I haven't given up on this yet, as the free form is interesting, and it does paint a picture I'd like to see even if the style is a lot more expressionistic then I'm used to. And I do need Dem. Rep. of Congo, which does not have a lot of literature to choose from ;)

Oh well, at least you had some easy crime fiction for fun.

Kathy wrote: "Oh well, at least you had some easy crime fiction for fun."
Weird genre of procrastination? Skipping the African reading for scottish murders... Anyway, writing about this pushed me to pick up Tram 83 again, so I'm half way through now!

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila
I made it! Great writing, even if I found it hard to get through (a bit like watching a week long poetry slam, in strobe lights, in a Congolese mining town nightclub) Review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I love this challenge idea: I have been doing something similar only with non-fiction.

I am pretty new to classical and general fiction literature so I don't have many suggestions in that department, but something I have done has been to read regional epics such as Segu, Sundiata, or the Kebra Nagast, collections of regional folklore (great for Ghana, South Sudan, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and many can be found in the open domain), and collections of poetry (great for Somalia).



And



Were two that I read that hit on Southern Africa (Botswana and Zimbabwe) and (primarily) Ghana respectively. They were both easy to read. I enjoyed them a lot more than The Heart of Darkness or the classic Out of Africa, and found them to be pretty informative in their own way as common themes and imagery became apparent.

Ty wrote: "I love this challenge idea: I have been doing something similar only with non-fiction."

Excellent recommendations, Ty, thank you!

I just found this:
The Literary Map of Africa, hosted by Ohio State University (https://library.osu.edu/literary-map-...), is one of the most comprehensive lists of author’s from the planet’s largest continent. Originally created by Miriam Conteh-Morgan between 2007-2009 the database connected to the map contains over 1,000 entries for African authors, sorted by their home country.
- Quote from http://booma.us/map-literary-map-afri...

Here's the map:
https://library.osu.edu/literary-map-...

And naturally a group on Goodreads has been reading Africa month by month for years - their bookshelf is a great ressource: https://www.goodreads.com/group/books...

I'm not sure it counts for your challenge but I'd like to recommend We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch I've just finished it.
It is not written by an African and it is non-fiction, but as far as learning about Africa, learning about and understanding Rwanda - it is fantastic. It is very thorough, amazingly well researched and well written. It is a sad book, but one that probably everyone should read.

Zoe wrote: "I'm not sure it counts for your challenge but I'd like to recommend We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch I've just..."

Thanks Zoe - I've come across the title somewhere, thanks for the recommendation!

Nice! I'll be keeping my eye on you. I'm sort of reading around the world, and don't have many titles for Africa. (But I'm afraid I'm currently in Central America and headed into South America, and I'm making very slow progress, so I doubt I'll make it Africa for another year or two. Or three.)

I reorganized the books on my list, so it's all in the same list, organized by country.

Another one done: Half of a Yellow Sun - this one a wonderful read, even if it is also a very harsh read about the rise and fall of Biafra - and all the people caught in the throws of history. I recommend this to anyone!

Oh good! Half a Yellow Sun is on my TBR. In fact it's part of a stack on the floor waiting to be read.

Anetq, I had the same reaction to Half of a Yellow Sun. It was so good but a tough read too. I knew absolutely nothing about the Biafran war, so it was interesting to learn about that terrible time in Nigeria.

2 Read: Heart of Darkness + How shall we kill the bishop

Heart of Darkness - which in this context does not really count as Africa by an African, but I'd never read it, and it is the ultimate "White man in the scary dark continent"-tale. And it was time. It was good, and more critical than I'd expected.

How Shall We Kill the Bishop? and Other Stories by Lily Mabura (from Kenya) is a bunch of short stories - interesting in their assorted strangeness, but a little too random for my taste (maybe I'm spoiled by reading too much clever Borges?).

Read Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou. (of Congo Brazzaville) Was not amused. But at least my slightly better knowledge of African literature allowed me to recommend a better book about life in and around a congolese bar! (in the Dem. Rep. of Congo, but hey!)

My review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Reading Water: New Short Story Fiction from Africa: An Anthology from Short Story Day Africa - a collection curated by Short Story Day Africa 2015.
It's a great collection of short stories selected in a blind competition, so there's a bit of everything from southern african english speaking countries.
I'm allowing myself to tick South Africa (8 authors), Swaziland (1), Malawi (1), Sierra Leone (1), Rwanda (1) - especially because some of those countries are so hard to find titles from. But I'll supplement, when more show up. (the collection also have authors from Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, where I've read other writers from already.) Luckily I make the rules in this challenge :)

Speaking of availability: Where Nigeria has a booming literary production widely available (even on the bestseller's tables in Europe) other places are harder to get your hands on.
Also there are obvious availability issues related to languages: English speaking Africa is obviously a lot easier to find in English, than French speaking Africa as translations are few and far between (I'm guessing French readers have the opposite problem, possibly excluding Nigeria).
Books written in French and Portuguese are rare in English translations, but can be found, often published in series specifically to bring African (or 3. world) literature to market.

Anetq wrote: "Speaking of availability: Where Nigeria has a booming literary production widely available (even on the bestseller's tables in Europe) other places are harder to get your hands on.
Also there are o..."

I think you make a good point here and I certainly find similar problems when looking for non Nigerian books by African authors.

Finished An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie. Very interesting, and while I may have learned more about life in Greenland and the Inuit life, than Togo - it was still there, and the book was an interesting read!
Review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

...and a quick read: Véronique Tadjo: As the Crow Flies (Côte D'Ivoire) fragments of stories, interesting in both content and style. I may be reading her again for Rwanda - as her book The Shadow of Imana is on my list.

Anetq wrote: "Biafra (yes is is Nigeria before and after, but this is really about Biafra!) Adichie: Half of a Yellow Sun."

Have your researches turned up any other Biafran lit. Especially stuff set during or about the civil war/airlift/etc...? It's an area I want to write about a little and figured you might have stumbled across a few other notable titles.

Jon wrote: "Anetq wrote: "Biafra (yes is is Nigeria before and after, but this is really about Biafra!) Adichie: Half of a Yellow Sun."

Have your researches turned up any other Biafran lit. Especially stuff s..."

Hi Jon - not really, sorry :) I've pretty much been sticking to fiction. But if you haven't come across it already, there is a group for reading africa over here (that I got mixed up in) - they've read Africa alphabetically since 2008 - and had a whole year of Nigerian reads - so the archives might have some of what you're looking for?
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Reading updates:
Aya by Marguerite Abouet - Great graphic novels about everyday life in Côte D'Ivoire (alas only the first three seems to be translated?)
Song of Be by Lesley Beake - YA rather educational stuff (not in a great way) about the bushmen of Namibia.
The Epic of Askia Mohammed - Oral history told by Nouhou Malio about the Songhay Empire and it's ruler. Interesting read if odd because of age and style - but not too different from the Odyssey. (Question: I have this on my list for Mali, but see other people listing it as Niger, but which is it? - I went with Mali, as they say Askia Mohammed's Songhay (city) was halfway between Niamey and Timbuktu - which by my maps would be in present day Mali?)
Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta (another classic Nigerian!) Great story of a woman who keeps fighting and realising her rights.
The Shadow of Imana by Véronique Tadjo - for Rwanda this time! Writing for memory 10 authors was sent to Rwanda in 98 to write about Rwanda after the 94 genocide. It's tough, but readable (and mercifully short) and even in her poetic style she manages to convey the gist of what happened, some of the whys and a lot of "then what"...

Now on to:
Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste

And I have these in the 'upcoming' pile:
Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzania)
Baho! by Roland Rugero (Burundi)
A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola)
Allah is Not Obliged Ahmadou Kourouma (Liberia)
Fuchsia Fuchsia by Mahtem Shiferraw (Eritrea)
Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto (Mozambique)
Secrets by Nuruddin Farah (Somalia)
A Cowrie of Hope by Binwell Sinyangwe (Tunisia)

Anetq wrote: "Reading updates:
Aya by Marguerite Abouet - Great graphic novels about everyday life in Côte D'Ivoire (alas only the first three seems to be translated?)
Song of Be by ..."
I count it for Niger. That city may be in present day Mali, but the borders are all over the place. At points like these I tend to go with the culture rather than which way the line is today on the map.
As far as I know this Epic is from the people of Niger.
Also on a practical note if you don't count it for Niger - do have anything else for that country? Where as The Fortunes of Wangrin is quite a good book - considered an African classic and is great for Mali.

No I have no other choice for Niger, so I had considered it for that reason :)
But good to hear that Fortunes of Wagrin is quite good - I have borrowed that as well...

Anetq wrote: "and had a whole year of Nigerian reads - so the archives might have some of what you're looking for?"

Thanks :) I'll check that out.

Anetq, have you read King Leopold's Ghost? It came very highly recommended for the Congo but the person didn't know if it would cover both countires, I suspect it would.

Jeri wrote: "Anetq, have you read King Leopold's Ghost? It came very highly recommended for the Congo but the person didn't know if it would cover both countires, I suspect it would."
No, I haven't heard of it? And it's too late for me as I read one for each Congo :) But let me know if it's good?

Done!! Well technically anyway: I've added 20 countries to my meager list of African countries read, so I'm now close to halfway through the entire continent (55 nations).

I last read:
Tanzania Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Zambia A Cowrie of Hope by Binwell Sinyangwe
Ethiopia Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste

But my favorites from the first 6 months have been:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Hairdresser of Harare by Tendai Huchu
and for those looking for a mix of genres and locations and like a short story: Water: New Short Story Fiction from Africa: An Anthology from Short Story Day Africa

PS: I've also joined and revived a group reading Africa:
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
So even though I reached 20, I'm not done reading Africa :)

Wow, you've made great progress! I'll check out the books you mention, thanks.